Roundup of Food Blog Posts I’ve Enjoyed #12

Dave and I are still into glassblowing, all right! That’s a photo of us in the studio, working a piece. I’m the gaffer in the photo, making what turned out to be a pretty glorious red mug, and Dave is blowing air into the piece as I shape it with wet newspaper.

Those silly purple glasses are actually didymium, meant to protect our eyes and allow us to see what we’re doing through the glare of the heat and flame.

The photography is by my dear friend, the brilliant and talented artist Scott Lefton.

To bring things back to food, here are a few food blog posts that I loved and highly recommend to you.

What better way to celebrate New Year’s Eve than to follow up your late latkes with some homemade Babka, courtesy of Smitten Kitchen? And when you’re sick of holiday foods, switch things up a bit with her Arroz con Pollo.

Now, there are just cool. Over at VeganYumYum, I came across the most astounding Knit Night Cupcakes, decorated with perfect balls of yarn, needles, scarves, and knitting projects in progress, all made of sugar. Seriously, you have got to go over there and admire those sugar art skills. They are beyond belief.

Next, stop by Cook and Eat to try out the Baked Plum Pudding – something like a tart, something like a cake, but delicious and lovely no matter what you choose to call it.

This post on making ikura from Blue Lotus is basically completely useless to those of us in the States, where it is basically impossible to find raw salmon roe sacs. Still, I found it completely fascinating to read, and hope to someday have the opportunity to put it to use.

A favorite food blog post round-up just wouldn’t be complete without a few recipes from Rasa Malaysia. This time, I’d like to draw your attention to her Ma Po Tofu, a rendition of that numbingly spicy classic, and her Szechuan Wok-fried Chicken, which looks like a perfect dead simple yet intensely flavorful weekday dinner.

Over at Tigers & Strawberries, Barbara offers a Meditation on Heads-On Shrimp, wherein she describes how to make a complex and satisfying shrimp stock (and enjoys sucking out shrimp heads on the side). She also made a fantastic Kimchi Noodle Soup, which I think saved me from my last cold earlier this fall. After trying it, I am immensely grateful to her for sharing the idea, and it has joined my small but mighty permanent Sick Food roster, along with Mom’s chicken soup.

Angela at A Spoonful of Sugar tells us that Swedish Saffron Bread is a traditional celebratory bread for Swedish Christmas, or rather, St. Lucia’s Day. I’m not familiar with the religious aspects of the holiday, but I still want to tear into that bread!

Brilynn posted a recipe for Pomegranate Rice that seriously inspired me to go out and buy a copy of Marcus Samuelsson’s The Soul of a New Cuisine, it looked so good. I’ve made a few of his other recipes so far, and I have enjoyed them all.